XIII
THE NAME Waaksamheyd, in Dutch, means “Watch-fulness,” and the captain of the newest ship to enter Sydney Harbor, Detmer Smith, was certainly watchful of his financial interests.
The English judged Captain Smith to be greedy and mercenary. When during his stay in Batavia Captain Ball of the Supply had negotiated with Smith for the hire of the Waaksamheyd, the Dutchman drove a very hard bargain. And when Governor Phillip tried to hire the Waaksamheyd to take himself and a number of seamen and marines back to England, Captain Smith at first quoted a price of three hundred and thirty pounds—an outrageously high sum—before lowering his fee to a more realistic level.
Smith was not only mercenary, he was dishonest. The provisions he brought into Sydney Cove were found to be old and spoiled, the rice full of weevils, the pork “ill-flavored, rusty and smoked.” All the provisions were weighed on landing (much to the disgust of the ship’s master, a crusty and ill-mannered character whom the English found to be “very disagreeable” and “impertinent”), and it was discovered that the weevil-ridden rice was some forty-three thousand pounds less than had been paid for. An extra ton of butter was demanded as compensation.
The Dutch were tired and out of sorts; they had had a long and dangerous voyage, battling contrary winds and losing sixteen of the Malay crewmen to accidents and disease. It was no wonder the ship’s master was snappish and irritable, and Captain Smith fuming and stubborn in his negotiations with Governor Phillip.
For if the English thought the Dutch were churlish and deceitful, the Dutch considered the English officers to be arrogant and self-righteous, full of themselves and afflicted with hauteur.
That the two groups were at odds was to the advantage of the Bryants. When Will approached Captain Smith, offering to buy from him the supplies and equipment he and his friends needed in order to make an escape attempt, the Dutchman agreed. Smith was hostile to the English authorities; why shouldn’t he sell a compass and quadrant to Will and Mary and their confederates, along with a little flour and rice and pork? Why shouldn’t he give them a chart of the coast, and sit down with Will and his friend Will Morton and tell them what he knew of the coastal waters?
Captain Smith even sold the escapees several muskets and a supply of powder—a very risky decision indeed, given who the purchasers were and the captain’s own relative vulnerability.
With Smith’s information about winds and tides, and with a chart—however sketchy and inaccurate—along with a hundred pounds of flour and the same of rice, fourteen pounds of “rusty” pork and a quantity of sweet tea leaves, plus a supply of nails, rope, a grapnel for use as an anchor, some carpenter’s tools, a fishing net and line and some resin and beeswax for caulking the seams of the boat and the all-important weapons, the Bryants were on their way to being equipped for their journey.
They would go in the governor’s cutter, a small open boat some twenty-three feet long and about seven feet wide with a mast and lugsail.1 During January and February of 1791 Will and the others made repairs and alterations to the cutter, ostensibly to improve her for fishing but actually making her ready for a long voyage. They fitted her with new masts and oars and made new flax sails for her. Will altered her, adding beds, probably aft, and strengthening her planking. The cutter had been in near-constant use for the past four years, a re-fitting was long overdue.
The challenge of the undertaking was extreme, and none in the escape party doubted it. Not only would they be setting off for the unknown, encountering unforeseen hazards and unexpected dangers, but they would be leaving at or close to the onset of the season when the southeast monsoon brought storms and heavy seas. They might founder and drown, or be eaten by sharks or stung by poisonous goblin fish of the kind that infested the harbor of Port Jackson. They might run aground on a reef, or be driven onshore by winds and currents and dashed against sharp rocks. They might be caught in a whirlpool, or carried upwards by cyclonic winds, or sunk by a breaching whale.
They would not be able to carry much water, and would have to go ashore frequently to replenish their supply. As for food, they hoped there would be plenty of fish when the supplies of flour and rice and pork ran out. They all knew the risks of disease, and of exposure to severe weather; they had all experienced these, and lived through them.
They knew the risks. With what varying degrees of fortitude or trepidation they faced them, their great and overwhelming desire was to get away, and this desire took precedence over all else.
The summer of 1791 was the most extreme the colonists had yet experienced. A scalding wind from the northwest made the air so hot and dry that grass burst into flame. Brush fires threatened Sydney Cove and Rose Hill, and with the water in the streams very low, it was difficult to put the fires out once they started. Convicts were put to work deepening the streambeds, but by midmorning of each working day they were wilting and fainting in the heat; by midafternoon the temperature was at 105 or 106 degrees near the harbor, and even hotter inland. As happened every summer, birds fell to the parched ground in midflight and lay where they fell, gasping for water. Plants in all the gardens shrivelled and died, and in the woods, fires flared, spread, and eventually burned themselves out.
It was a season for lethargy, but in the Bryants’ hut, secret activity continued. Supplies for the coming journey were hidden in a cache under the floor. Meetings were held, decisions made about when to leave and how to manage the loading and launching of the boat without detection. The unmarried convicts said their private good-byes to sweet-hearts and lovers, and to their closest friends.
When and to whom Mary said her good-byes is nowhere recorded. She must have made friends among the women convicts—and perhaps enemies and rivals. Possibly Catherine Fryer and Mary Haydon, her two confederates from Exeter, were still alive and living in Sydney Cove. There must have been many in the cemetery, men and women alike, whom she had known, nursed and mourned. But those closest to her, Will and her children, would be with her wherever she went; there was no need to say good-bye to them. Or to the seven men who had become her comrades and fellow conspirators in recent months.
On the strength and skill of these seven men, plus her husband, and on her own fortitude, Mary was about to risk her future safety and that of her children. A sobering thought indeed—if she took the time to reflect on it. But Mary’s time was taken up by activity, not reflection, as Sydney Cove baked in the terrible searing heat of high summer, and the time for departure came closer with each passing day.
By the end of February, 1791, the group was almost ready to go. The secret cache was nearly full of food and equipment, work on the boat was done. Will took the cutter out into the harbor fishing, with a crew of convicts and others aboard. He caught what fish he could, then hoisted the sail and began to tack up the harbor, the boat heavily laden with fish and with her human cargo and lying low in the water.
Then something unexpected happened. A strong gust of wind filled the sail and, before Will could go about, the sail was torn away from the mast and the boat filled with water and keeled over. The crew and few passengers swam to safety, but Will, wanting above all to save the cutter on which all the escape plans depended, stayed with the capsized boat, trying to right her, even as the current carried her toward the rocks.
Several of the Ioras, witnessing the accident from on shore, came to Will’s rescue and saved both Will and his vessel, gathering up the oars and other pieces of flotsam from the near-wreck and towing the damaged cutter up to the cove.2
Will was not injured, but the boat was badly damaged—so badly that all plans for escape had to be abandoned for the time being.
Over the next month the needed repairs were made, new planking put in place and a new mast made and sails sewn. Outwardly, the cutter was once again sound—as sound as she had been before the accident. But the damage to Will’s self-confidence, and to the hopes of Mary and the others, must have been equally hard to repair. For the accident had been a reminder of just how precarious the long sea journey would be, how vulnerable the vessel, how helpless the passengers when confronted by sudden gusts and rogue waves. All must have wondered how seaworthy the repaired cutter truly was, how difficult she would be to maneuver in rough waters.
Still, peril or no peril, they were committed to the venture. Soon the weather would change, they had to go quickly, and on a night of no moon and a calm sea.
All the transports had left the harbor, the Supply had been sent to Norfolk Island and there was only the Waaksamheyd lying at anchor off Sydney Cove. On March 27, 1791, the Dutch ship sailed for England. Now the authorities lacked the means to give chase to any escaping vessel, even if the escape should be discovered; once the cutter was far down the harbor, none of the smaller fishing craft had the speed to catch her.
On the moonless night of March 28, sometime between nine and midnight, Mary and Will, James Martin and Sam Bird and Banbury Jack, Will Morton, Nate Lilley, John Butcher and Will Allen quietly left the Bryants’ hut, hauling their sacks of flour and rice, flagons of water, muskets and powder and bags of tools. They must have made several trips out to the beach where the cutter was tethered, carrying no light, groping their way along the familiar path, swearing under their breaths when they stumbled. In their haste they dropped a scale and a handsaw, and spilled several pounds of rice. But no one noticed or reported them.
With every quiet step they must have been listening for the Night Watch, and for the bells that struck the hour, and for the reassuring voices of the sentinels at their posts calling out “All’s well.” The encampment was asleep by the time the two children, Charlotte and Emanuel, were brought from the hut and put into the boat, and the six strongest men began to pull at the oars.
The tide was with them as they rowed down the harbor toward South Head, where the sentries were, and the wind favorable. The only sounds, in the stillness of the night, were the regular slap of the oars in the water and the gurgle of small waves passing under the cutter’s bow. They rowed for hours, taking turns at the oars, until to their great relief they passed safely out through the harbor mouth, pursued by no hue and cry from the sentries. By dawn they were nearly out of sight of land, scudding along under dark rain clouds, riding the swells of the open ocean.